In 1950, Christian Century ran a chain of articles on twelve church buildings, a few huge, a few small, each one representing a strand of yank mainline Protestantism. Now, approximately fifty years later, Randall Balmer--author and host of Mine Eyes Have noticeable the Glory, the acclaimed ebook and PBS sequence on American evangelicism--has revisited every one of those twelve church buildings to take the heart beat of Protestantism this day. the result's a striking narrative, graced with touches of neighborhood colour and remarkable photos of the folk concerned, and packed with deft observations and thoroughly nuanced insights approximately Protestantism at century's end.
a lot as he did in Mine Eyes Have visible the Glory, Balmer crisscrosses the United States to offer us a first-hand examine how Christianity has fared within the final half-century. What emerges is a church challenged through lowered impact, yet with indicators of wish for the long run. for example, he is taking us to West Hartford, Connecticut, the place we find out how a gregarious pastor, Bob Heppenstall, rekindled the spirit of the 1st Church of Christ Congregational--still housed in its stately, vintage New England meetinghouse--that had suffered from inept administration until eventually contemporary years. And in Ames, Iowa, on the Collegiate United Methodist Church, we watch George White fight to regain his church's as soon as dominant voice within the non secular lifetime of the city, a voice now dimmed by means of the expansion of fundamentalism. a few church buildings have held steadfastly to fashioned roles, resembling the Washington Prairie Lutheran Church, in Decorah, Iowa, which has been a version of continuity, serving its Norwegian-American neighborhood in a lot an analogous method because it used to be based in 1851. And Balmer additionally visits a few thriving church buildings, akin to Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church, led via the good preacher John Lloyd Ogilvie, who used to be lately appointed chaplain of the U.S. Senate. In Minneapolis, Balmer encounters Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, a congregation that has not just elevated its club, yet can now name itself the largest Lutheran church within the world.
In Grant Us Courage, one in all our so much considerate chroniclers of the yankee scene bargains an intimate examine mainline Protestantism on the shut of the century. We come away with the sensation of getting been there, of getting listened to the voices of an immense phase of Christian existence, and of getting stumbled on a deeper realizing of non secular lifestyles in the US today.